Not Your Father's Football

"Foreign glory hunter." You get this a lot if you tour the comments sections of many Arsenal blogs or other football fora. I'm long enough in the Gooner tooth to understand that Arsenal are a club many a neutral love to hate. I can understand that. In the thirties Chapman took a team from the 'soft' south of England and transformed them into the best club in the land, dominating in a manner that the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United wouldn't do for decades.

In the late nineties and early naughties a bookish looking, diet-conscious, tee-totaling Frenchman came along and upset the holy equilibrium of lad football culture by taking the same glorious club to still unequaled heights. In less time than it took Alex Ferguson to get his hands on a league title, Arsene Wenger did so three times and along the way produced an unbeatable team, rocking the throne of Ferguson's United with a bunch of hardly known cast-offs from the continent and beyond. When money was proving the way in the newly anointed Premier League, Wenger showed them a cheaper solution without sacrificing all the swashbuckling style. 

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Football Please

from the factory floor

BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Brittania Stadium

Referee:  Chris Foy

Stoke City 1-1 Arsenal             28 April 2012

Crouch [9]               Van Persie [15]

Knowing that none of the other "big" sides have come away from the Brittania with anything more than a single point, and that the Arsenal have only ever got full value there at the very high cost of Aaron Ramsey's leg, you could say this trip to the Factory came with some anxiety mixed in with the usual excited anticipation.  A change to the subway schedule lost me an extra 15 minutes and served to rumble my nerves that much more, despite the attempt at soothing it with delicious, football-gods-appeasing bacon.

The angst of my late arrival was calmed somewhat by the discovery that our spanking new NY Gooner flag was making its debut on the main level. I sidled up to the bar underneath it to find Tin Lid, TJ, Kaiser and a one-nil scoreline to the towel boys courtesy of a Peter Crouch header. Ed and the Captain would join moments later. Apparently Chris Foy had already booked Dean Whitehead for a studs first tackle in the first five minutes, but it still looked to me that Stoke were going to put in another shift of overstepping the margins of fair play.

Close The Deal

Recently I wrote bemoaning the typical canned comments about lessons learned with respect to winning against lower-table opposition. For the past handful of seasons we have witnessed Arsenal sides of varying permutations raise their performance levels when facing sides competing for European places, only to shit the bed when facing the promoted sides and/or relegation fodder. 

To wit, I was referring to the loss to QPR and the subsequent win versus Man City. While we followed that win with another against Wolves, somewhat addressing this tendency, we went into the Wigan match at home perhaps feeling that just showing up would secure the points. It only took ten minutes for the visitors to exploit our lethargic start and secure their first ever victory on our ground. Our performance that day was especially galling because there was every indication that Wigan would give us a game, having just beaten United for the first time full stop, after only losing to Chelsea on the back of some offside howlers and taken three points at Anfield before that.

Bollocks to Cake

from the factory floor

BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE

Ashburton Grove

Referee:  Mike Dean

Arsenal 0-0 Chelsea    21 April 2012

For the past two seasons, my birthday and the Arsenal tend to mean one thing. Or more specifically, one point. A few seasons back it was a drab nil-nil versus a Man City side clearly uninterested in getting off the bus, so they just parked it in our ground. Last year it was a shambolic display against Spurs, where we dropped a two goal lead and I ended up sharing a slice of the cake the Kaiser brought with some of the spudlings there after spending a good chunk of that match screaming obscenities at them. Not a lot was different this time around, except there was no cake.

I arrived at the Factory for the early kick-off and made my way downstairs, a Dogfish from Liam in hand, to discover about a dozen chavskis huddled around and not an NY Gooner in sight. In trickled Barry, Ed, the Captain, Rashida and Chandler one by one, the last two opting to take in the match upstairs to avoid the chavs. Probably a good idea and had I remembered properly at the time, it was upstairs with Liam when we tonked them 5-3.  We must have used up all the goals in that game.

Lessons Learned?

One topic that we discussed at the Football Factory on Sunday, with regards to the quality of the respective performances by the Arsenal and Manchester City, was the question of which team looked more like title contenders. We were having difficulty getting the ball in the net, hitting the post 3 times, missing open goals, and even clearing our own goal bound shots from the line. But our commitment and superiority were obvious and without bias there appeared to be only one deserved winner on the pitch. City, on the other hand put in the same kind of performance that ended with scoreless draws on their last two visits to the Grove, showing a complacency that belied their position in the title race.

The display from Wenger's charges matched the requirements of the occasion. There is no question City have quality in abundance but in contrast to recent April's the team found wanting wasn't wearing red and white. I was disappointed to see Chamberlain on the bench at the start but understood the need for a late spark and given Gervinho's absence it seemed just about the right decision.  And even if Benayoun wasn't great on the day, with him on the pitch we had all of the required threat and the chances necessary to beat them. That we eventually did so speaks about our character and our desire to put the QPR result right and to return to winning ways. Some may even say that we did just that.